Curator’s talk with Benj Gerdes

Conversation with Benj Gerdes, one of the curators of the upcoming exhibition Past is Not Post.

Thursday, February 02 at 7:00 p.m. | Seminar room of the Edith-Russ-Haus | in English

Past is Not Post is an exhibition of artists who work on history and memory or on the basis of archival research. As much as the contexts and methods of these works may differ, they are united by an artistic impulse: in a present in which other paths seem blocked, they use the reappraisal of history as a kind of back door. In view of the ambivalent role that artists play in today’s societies – especially the problem of joining existing political and social conflicts – overlapping and unfinishednarratives of the past can offer alternative approaches. Can such an engagement with the past succeed in creating spaces for the reformulation of our collective possibilities and needs, spaces that stand for both resistance and retreat?

Benj Gerdes (born 1978 in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA) is an artist, writer and organizer based in New York. He is interested in intersections of radical politics, knowledge production and popular imagination. Gerdes studied at Brown University, Hunter College, the City University of New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, USA. His work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The New Museum, New York and the Tate Modern, London, among others.